Lorem ipsum generator
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Placeholder text in its standard form: a scrambled passage of Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, cut off partway through so the first word is the tail of "dolorem". Available by the paragraph, the sentence or the exact word.
How to use the lorem ipsum generator
The passage is real. Cicero is arguing, in 45 BC, about what makes something worth pursuing, and the sentence the filler comes from — "neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet" — says that nobody loves pain for its own sake. Somewhere in the fifteenth century a printer cut into it to make a specimen sheet, losing the "do" and leaving "lorem ipsum" as the opening of a text that has been standing in for copy ever since. Letraset put it on dry-transfer sheets in the 1960s, Aldus PageMaker shipped it in the 1980s, and that is how a Latin philosophical treatise ended up as the default content of desktop publishing.
What makes it work is typographic rather than linguistic, and printers had a word for the job before anyone had a computer: greeking, setting false text so an eye judges the block instead of reading it. Latin does that better than repeated words or random letters. Its word lengths and letter frequencies sit close enough to English that a paragraph has the right texture and the right rag down the right-hand edge, while being unreadable enough that a client looking at a layout stays looking at the layout. Repeated words give a page a visible rhythm that is not there in real prose; random letters produce word shapes that no language makes.
The texture only goes so far, though, and the limit is worth knowing before you trust a design that was signed off on it. Lorem ipsum is short-worded and entirely unaccented, so it flatters any layout that will later have to hold a German compound noun, an email address or a surname with a diacritic in it. And the standard objection stands: filler hides the fact that nobody has decided what the page says. A design built around three tidy paragraphs tends to fall apart when the real copy turns out to be one sentence or nine. Draft copy, however rough, tests more than this does.
One practical hazard. Placeholder text ships. Searching any large site for "lorem ipsum" turns up live pages often enough that it is a recognisable genre of mistake, usually in a footer, a meta description or an empty tab nobody opened during review. If you use it, make removing it something other than a thing you will remember.
What people use it for
- Filling a page mockup while the real copy is still being written
- Showing a layout to a client without them stopping to read the words
- Loading a CMS template with body text to judge the typography
- Seeing how a paragraph style holds up over several hundred words
Questions
Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC. A printer cut into the sentence "neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum…" to make a specimen, and the cut is why it opens mid-word.
The source sentence says that nobody loves pain for its own sake. The scrambled filler itself means nothing; the word order was destroyed centuries ago.
A repeated word gives the page a rhythm real prose does not have, and random letters make word shapes no language produces. Latin has roughly English word lengths and letter frequencies.
The printing term for setting false text so the eye judges the block rather than reading it. Lorem ipsum is the surviving example.
Letraset sold it on dry-transfer lettering sheets in the 1960s, and Aldus PageMaker carried it into desktop publishing in the 1980s.
Yes, for the same count. Nothing shifts under a layout you are in the middle of judging.
Sparingly. It has no accents and short words, so it flatters a layout that will later hold a German compound or a name with a diacritic in it.
Yes, choose Words and set the number, up to two hundred. The count is capped at two hundred whichever unit you pick, so two hundred words is the ceiling on that tab rather than two hundred paragraphs.